The Virtual Extension Specialist

Abstract
This article describes a new view of the Extension specialist for the 21st century--The Virtual Extension Specialist. The Virtual Extension Specialist is vastly different from its human counterpart, yet relies on human interaction and utilization to establish itself in its virtual Extension environment. The story of WoodPro, a living, breathing, virtual Extension specialist, is presented here not only as a view of the future of Extension, but as a wake-up call for the traditional, human Extension specialists still out there.

Charles D. Ray
Assistant Professor, Wood Operations Research
School of Forest Resources
The Pennsylvania State University
University Park, Pennsylvaniacdr14@psu.edu

Introduction

In their daring work on the future of
Extension, authors King and Boehlje (2000) attempted to usher in a
brave, new world for cooperative Extension with a proposal for the
creation of an entirely new, Web-based Extension system they called
e-CES. And though JOE in the subsequent years has
carried many articles describing excellent Extension products
delivered in Web-based applications (Harrison, Kanade, & Toney,
2004; Lehtola, Nelson, & Brown, 2004; DeVaney, 2004; LaBorde,
2003; Kraft, 2004; & Jackson, Hopper, & Clatterbuck, 2004),
the acceptance and adoption of e-CES concept has been slow to
materialize.

The implications for Extension raised by
these two prescient authors remain as valid today as ever. In fact,
the opportunities have become clearer as trends among Internet
information providers have become apparent. Extension professionals
today, armed now with more than a decade of exposure to the World
Wide Web, should more easily be able to grasp the concept that our
Extension niche still exists for us and that it more than ever
depends on adaptation of Internet technologies to build on and
reinforce that niche.

However, capture of that niche does depend,
as King & Boehlje (2000) suggested, on breaking traditional
thought patterns about our role in the crowded field of information
providers, how we manage our store of knowledge, and how we execute
our Extension mission. This paper describes a new view of the
Extension specialist for the 21st century--The Virtual Extension
Specialist.

Traditional Extension on the Internet

By now, everyone knows that Web sites that
reflect a mirror image of the university's organizational structure
are not real popular. For most of the history of the Internet, public
organizations seemed to feel that Internet sites were simply
glorified directories for their units and programs. Directory
information for an organization's services is certainly one useful
component of a Web-based approach to constituent interaction.
However, that is just one (and perhaps a minor one) of the multiple
products an Extension organization can offer its constituent base.

The next product offering most Extension
programs grasp is typically to advertise its programs and short
courses. Again, this is another useful product offering, but one that
perhaps has delivered far less than it promised. The root cause of
this letdown is that the Internet has cheapened the value of
information traditionally offered by Extension programs by offering
an array of similar information, free of charge in most cases. The
typical Internet user, during a search engine inquiry into any
specific topic, may in fact discover that State U. is offering a
short course next month on her area of interest but, during the same
Internet search, may discover many Web sites that offer the same
information, right at her fingertips.

So the really aggressive Extension
specialists have leaped into the fray and developed tools (or on-line
courses) that could be delivered on-line to their constituents. The
specialized nature of these Extension tools often finds a large and
willing user constituency, and Internet-based Extension tools may in
fact be the most popular and representative face of Extension today.
Here, however, we reach the outer limits of traditional Web-based
Extension programming. For the Virtual Extension Specialist, however,
this is just the beginning.

Definition of the Virtual Extension Specialist

The Virtual Extension Specialist:

Defines the Extension program though a
Web site, instead of creating a Web site as another component of the
Extension effort;

Takes on the identity of the Web site,
instead of using a Web site to reflect a real-world identity;

Taking on that identity, becomes
intimately familiar with the skills necessary to refine and improve
its personality;

Uses the Web site as a primary contact
to establish secondary personal interfaces;

Becomes a lead navigator (King &
Boehlje 2000) for a constituency or group of constituencies through
the on-line universe of information;

Continually evaluates the Extension
effort through the progress and popularity of the Web site and the
personal contacts developed through its use;

Keeps track of all potential program
evaluation sources, such as emails, on-lines polls, and Web
statistics;

Continually builds the Web site as a
matter of duty to the Extension program; and

Is a member of the Extension and
information profession in general, not constrained by information
sources generated solely by the home institution.

WoodPro: A Living, Breathing Virtual
Extension Specialist

Penn
State WoodPro was born in
September, 2002. Its precursor was a traditional wood products
Extension program that had been essentially retired about 5 years
earlier and had largely been relegated to a few small wood products
short courses, with an average constituency of a few hundred
attendees a year, at most. WoodPro's
creator, new both to
Extension service and to the institution's home state and faced with
the daunting task of energizing a large but largely disinterested
industry constituency, gambled that a Web-based Extension program
would bring him into contact with his targeted group.

Two months were dedicated by
the non-Web-savvy creator learning the language of the as-yet unborn
and unnamed infant. Prior to its birth, it was conceived as an
information portal for the wood products industry and modestly
designed to deliver this information through a simplistic matrix
interface. Upon its birth in September 2002, WoodPro proudly boasted
six pages of content, and an overwhelming crowd of 29 visitors paid
their respects to the site that month.

From the very first, WoodPro
had a life of its own. The creator became the slave as WoodPro
consumed more and more of his time. Interestingly, though, a
symbiotic relationship began to develop between WoodPro and its human
Extension specialist. The process of learning and capturing
information for Extension purposes both fed WoodPro and was fed by
WoodPro. Even the name, which was selected as a shortened version of
the Wood Products Productivity Program, quickly came to be identified
with the Web site and the human Extension specialist synonymously,
even though the human was in actuality nothing like a real wood pro.

In order to stem this rising
tide of false reputation, the human quickly moved to recruit other
human resources into the
WoodPro identity. In this way, WoodPro soon became a model of the
university-wide resource suggested by Patton (1987), with faculty in
Penn State's School of Forest Resources, Department of Industrial
Engineering, Department of Agricultural Engineering, Department of
Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, College of Business, and
even the Pennsylvania Technical Assistance Program contributing to
its growing persona.

Shortly after the birth of
WoodPro, the human Extension specialist spent several months on the
road, traveling to companies that were perceived to be WoodPro
constituents. In these early months of WoodPro, the face-to-face
contact with constituents was found necessary to stimulate the first
early traffic to the WoodPro Web site. The human specialist found on
these early visits that the potential constituents found themselves
thoroughly unimpressed by his presence at their company or meeting.
However, the Web site address was always introduced to these
potential constituents in hope that future dialogue might be
established.

Also of note in these early
days was a common comment from fellow Extension humans that the Web
site interface was not appropriate for Extension audiences in
general, citing reasons similar to those described by Howell &
Habron (2004). To a certain extent this has proven true with the
traditional wood products Extension constituency, those lower level
industry employees who typically attended local short courses.
However, as WoodPro grew in stature and maturity, it began to attract
a larger, more diverse constituency to its information offerings,
confirming the predictions of "new customers" by King and
Boehlje (2000) and illustrating the tendency for gradual adoption
illustrated by High and Jacobson (2005).

WoodPro site usage statistics
(Figure 1), which reflect a significant growth trend from its early
life, include a slow but gradually increasing audience from what was
originally perceived to be its intended audience, the wood products
employee of Pennsylvania. Still, this traditional constituency is
dwarfed by the larger, worldwide constituency that now visits WoodPro
every month.

Figure 1.WoodPro Site Visits Since
Inception, Illustrating the High Number of Visits from All Sources
(Yellow, Blue, and Turquoise curves) Versus Pennsylvania
"Traditional" Constituency (Maroon)

Assuming the Role of Lead Navigator

As its quest for virtual knowledge grew,
WoodPro became quite proficient in identifying sources for useful
information and weeding out the deafening background noise of the
World Wide Web that many information hunters find so distracting. In
order to capture and share this proficiency, WoodPro developed
focused navigation pages that manifested itself in many different
forms--as an on-line
e-newspaper; an Extension
educator support page; industry links,
associations,
and calendar
pages; even as a site specialist for navigating a large
government agency. As this role of lead
navigator grew, WoodPro became inextricably associated with those
World Wide Web sites navigated and referenced, and the new "core
constituency" (those visiting the site more than once a month)
continued to grow to its current rate of over 500 per month.

Conversion of the Work Environment

Microsoft
optimistically calls its Windows interface the "desktop."
For most of its users, it is more like a window that is occasionally
used to transfer actual desktop work into an electronic format. Not
for our virtual Extension specialist, WoodPro. It has learned over
time to create, file, and present all its work through the virtual
desktop of its human counterpart. Its human accomplice specialist has
learned that all knowledge-creating materials in the virtual
environment must reside on the virtual interface, the Web server.

Therefore, any document that resides in paper
files or non-digitized bulletins and documents does not really exist
in the brave new world of virtual Extension. Furthermore, any
electronic documents that are not stored and served to the Web site
also do not exist in the virtual Extension environment. Therefore,
the virtual Extension specialist considers every document fair game
for posting to the Web site.

This conversion of thought was described by
King and Boehlje (2000) as the necessary process of changing from
distribution to access. The virtual Extension specialist does not
distribute information from a carefully guarded repository; it
provides access to the largest, richest, most content-focused
knowledge base that it can develop within the scope of its Extension
mission. Creating this environment is a skills challenge to the
traditional Extension specialist at the beginning of the virtual
transition, but one that is more easily overcome with the passage of
time, the improvement of virtual programming tools, and the
dedication of the virtual specialist.

Currency Is Relevancy

WoodPro's growth is a direct result of its
efforts to remain current with rapidly developing issues and new
sources of information. Internet users soon grow weary of turning up
the same search results to the same search topic. WoodPro takes
advantage of this boredom of repetition. By providing several
features that change regularly, WoodPro gives its constituents reason
to return again and again to the site. WoodPro takes care to
demonstrate the currency of its offering by highlighted
dating of the most-used and changed features and links.

If It Doesn't Fit the Traditional Extension
Evaluation Model, Is It Extension?

Facing program review by university program
administrators, WoodPro found that a large portion of its virtual
Extension efforts were not easily adapted into the preferred program
metrics. It became evident, however, that many of the "new"
metrics were even more information-rich than the traditional metrics.
For instance, because WoodPro's Extension
"bulletins" were created and posted
on-line by title, the page view statistics accurately reflect the
number of Extension constituents who found the bulletin through
content-specific searching and at least scanned each particular
bulletin. This is a more accurate reflection, the virtual Extension
specialist would argue, than the number of hard-copy Extension
bulletins printed and distributed. How many of these traditional
bulletins are thoughtlessly picked up by expo attendees, with never
another thought given to them?

Of course, the steady increase of Web site
traffic is certainly a verifiable indicator of Extension program
health over time. However, for those administrative traditionalists
who like to see personal feedback on program assessments, the virtual
Extension specialist can always fall back on a tabularized report of
email comments sent in by its virtual constituents. Web site traffic
always provides the virtual Extension specialist a ready pulse on the
current interests of its constituents (Figure 2).

The Virtual Extension Specialist Knows No Bounds
or End to Its Work

WoodPro, even though identifying itself as
the Pennsylvania Wood Products Productivity Program, is utilized by
the general public, researchers, and Extension specialists the world
over. While the overriding mission is to promote the welfare to the
local industry, the virtual Extension specialist recognizes that the
sheer volume of virtual program constituents could easily distract
him from its local constituency.

In order to maintain a fair sense of mission,
WoodPro sends out its human Extension counterparts on regular
missions
to the local constituency, has them hold
locally-focused conferences
and programs,
and offers Pennsylvania companies exposure
on the Website. In this way, the virtual
Extension specialist stays true to its local constituency and mission
while providing virtual Extension support to its worldwide virtual
constituency.

Finally, the virtual Extension specialist can
never rest on its Web pages. WoodPro's original six pages of content
now number over 100, with several thousand links providing WoodPro
constituents their wood industry-specific interface to the world.
Every day, every action of the human Extension specialist is
evaluated in light of its value to the virtual Extension program.

For this reason, WoodPro actively seeks to
groom future human collaborators for its mission. And future
collaborations could come through a newly created virtual
collaboration environment, eXtension,
a nationwide effort to move the profession of Extension closer to
that brave, new world envisioned by King and Boehlje. The Extension
mission for WoodPro will end only when wood products themselves
become irrelevant to the virtual constituency.

Likewise, each and every virtual Extension
program of the 21st century will be evaluated by its current
relevancy to the needs of its constituency. Programming dates must be
kept current, on-line registrations must function conveniently and
correctly, agricultural alerts must contain status updates and
real-time geographical tracking, on-line questions must be answered
promptly. The virtual Extension specialist must present the
constituency with the most timely, most useful, most fun way to
acquire information in the realm of that extension program.

Such is the face and the challenge of 21st
century Extension missions and specialists. The future is now.